Blog by Alex Deve – all those ideas are mine and just mine. Blame me for it. Nobody else.

Calf’s liver at Buckeye Roadhouse, Mill Valley

In the US calf’s liver is probably the cheapest piece of meat you can find (some may not even call it meat). In France, it’s one of the most expensive ones, and in many cases, very hard to find because as soon as it hits the shelves, people buy it.

Every time I go to a butcher, I look at those calf’s liver, selling for $4-5 a pound, and think about my dad who loves them. I’ve tried to cook them a few times. It’s very straight forward and quite rewarding if you like them.

This post is not about how to cook calf’s liver (I’ll do another one for this) – it’s about how to eat them. I was very surprised when, one day, my friend Pascal asked me if I wanted to have calf’s liver for lunch. He kept on praising this restaurant called Buckeye just after Sausalito. I was really puzzled. Pascal is a food lover, owning a few bakeries in San Francisco, so how come he talks to me about calf’s liver in California? All that stuff is usually thrown away in a minute here (we eat it all in France!). He insisted: this is going to be one of the best calf’s liver of your life.

OK – so here we go. On our way to Buckeye. We order. The dish is brought to our table… WOOUAH! A real one, with fantastic crispy bacon, caramelized onions on top, and a very nice puree, with a vinegar sauce. And yes, the liver was pink, which is exactly how it should be! OMG… soooo good.

Every now and then, we return there. Yesterday, we were driving back from Napa after a day in the sun. We did a quick stop and once again were blown away by this dish. It was perfect.